Kids are short-circuiting their school-issued Chromebooks for TikTok clout

I don't get it. I was never this stupid as a kid.

Edit: thank you for explaining to me that many of you were that stupid. I guess I never hung around any of you.

Youthful rebellion transcends technology.

Is there much difference between this and, say, using a pen to drill a hole in your desk?

Nearly 20 years ago, I was in a computer programming class surrounded by clunky towers and desktops.

Suddenly, a loud popping, then one of the machines starts belching smoke like a budget fog machine. The kid using it is calmly moved to another station while the prof investigates.

Fifteen minutes later - pop. Smoke again.

Turns out the kid was jamming a paperclip into the power supply like he was playing Operation: Arson Edition.

That was his last day.

On the bright side, computers are a lot cheaper now - and kids are still dumb. So, maybe progress?

I remain utterly convinced that Tiktok is nothing but a chinese psyop experiment to see how far they can manipulate people into actions that would otherwise be prevented by our brains screaming in self preservation.

Has there ever been a "good" trend on tiktok? Every week its just another destructive thing that gullible idiots are being tricked into doing.

Aren't the families responsible for the damages?

the so-called Chromebook Challenge includes students sticking things into Chromebook ports to short-circuit the system.

I am rather surprised that works. I thought any modern device would have overload protection in place. I think I even remember accidentally tripping it on some device, but it would just reset after reboot.
I also tried to see the max output current of my previous phone this way. Load it up till the protection trips. Result: Stable up to 2.1A, tripped at 2.5A.

Oh, yeah. A Xiaomi phone charger I have also shuts down if I either overload it or immediately load it near max rating rather than gradually increase the load.

I wish we lived in a world where they're doing it because they don't want locked-down toys issued by an evil corporation. But of course that's not the reason.

P.S. proprietary software should be illegal in education. Full stop.

Perhaps it's more like "Kids short-circuiting school issued chromebooks because of excessive surveillance."

...but probably not (or at least, not entirely) because many kids are dumb.

source: was a dumb kid.

It’d be a crying shame if the students were required to complete the school year with physical books and a notebook.

Fuck chromebooks anyways, Google shouldn't be allowed to steal so much information about our youth directly from the devices they use at school. They should be using laptops with Linux installed on them, preferably Pop!OS to preserve the kids privacy.

I don't condone damaging school property, although I think it's a lesser evil to Google's privacy practices on Chromebooks.

If this were an unbiased and honest article; then it would read “Kids are short-circuiting their school-issued Chromebooks for social clout.” The subtle message, in this article, is TikTok = bad, which is illogical because events such as this will occur regardless of platform or even lack of a platform. It will ALWAYS happen. The question is how to mitigate these events as much as possible, because it’s impossible to completely eradicate “kids doing X for social clout.” It’s a part of learning and being human.

Not even that bad, they are learning about electricity in a hands-on manner. USB standards protect against short circuits so this is over exaggerated heavily.

Google didn’t respond to Ars Technica’s request for comment.

To be fair, I don't really see why they should. Chances are they didn't factor in that level of stupidity when designing those things.

Why throw the kids in the slammer? So they can eventually come back out as hardened criminals and contribute to the recidivism statistics, further circling society down the drain because they were betrayed by the corporations that injected their explosive products into our tax-funded school systems? They should give the TikTok kids full STEM scholarships for exposing these dangerous design flaws!

Hold the Chromebook manufacturer liable for the unsafe hardware design flaw with no overcurrent protection, hold the school liable for recklessly issuing these dangerous laptops that cheaped out on safety features, and hold Google liable for neglecting power handling in their Chromebook software! Get the CPSC on the phone and get every single Flamebook recalled across the nation!

It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous!

How about the "graduate from highschool challenge"?

the worst part is expecting kids to learn about computers using a fucking Chromebook.

Parents and psychiatrists have been trying to wrap their heads around how some of the more dangerous Internet trends take off, especially among kids.

Kids are dumb and they do dumb things. There's not really that much to wrap one's head around.

Just got a notification about this from my kids school district in Northern CA.

Wouldn't the port get shutdown/disabled if you try to overload it?

Man I'm so sorry to my highschool Chromebook. They gave me that shit in yr seven and I was incapable of keeping things in one piece at that age. I think every key had been taken off by the end of the year and there were several holes in the outer casing.

Behold the next generation of voters.

Good, chromebooks suck.

Chromebooks are absolute garbage.

Most computers I have used over the last 15 years will disable USB power if you short out the port (working with electronics you tend to replicate the "sticking scissors into a USB port" with some regularity)

Pencil lead I am sure causes other issues though... it gets red hot and melts eventually

When I was a middle schooler I definitely wanted to see what would happen from messing around with things like that would be like...

But I also wasn't inundated by short form videos trying it out and encouraging me to do it myself also as part of a trend...

What does "clout" mean?

I thought system will turn off USB port if notice current over draw. Look like I am wrong.

Good. Less spyware machines in the world.

These kids know they’re gonna be replaced by tech and they’re fighting back

Just gotta get some of that Magic Smoke.

seeing a lot of "kids are especially dumb these days" in this thread and reflecting on 20 years ago when grown ass adults were trying to charge their iphones in the microwave and stepping on their ipads to use the "bathroom scale" app.

people have always been this stupid y'all